Category: Bookworm

New Nonfiction for May

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Every family has a story. For some of us, our family of origin is a solid foundation that feeds our confidence and helps us navigate life’s challenges. For others, it’s a source of pain, hurt, and conflict that can feel like a lifelong burden. In this empowering guide, licensed therapist and bestselling relationship expert Nedra Glover Tawwab offers clear advice for identifying dysfunctional family patterns and choosing the best path to breaking the cycle and moving forward.

The Roaring Twenties has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.  But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman – Madge Oberholtzer –whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees.

Alexandra Robbins goes behind the scenes to tell the true, sometimes shocking, always inspirational stories of three teachers as they navigate a year in the classroom. She follows Penny, a southern middle school math teacher who grappled with a toxic staff clique at the big school in a small town; Miguel, a special ed teacher in the western United States who fought for his students both as an educator and as an activist; and Rebecca, an East Coast elementary school teacher who struggled to schedule and define a life outside of school.

Wouldn’t you like to live longer? And better? In this operating manual for longevity, Dr. Peter Attia draws on the latest science to deliver innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health. Aging and longevity are far more malleable than we think; our fate is not set in stone. With the right roadmap, you can plot a different path for your life, one that lets you outlive your genes to make each decade better than the one before.

The human body has the amazing ability to switch which fuels it uses for energy based on what fuel is available at the time—researchers call this metabolic flexibility. Bodies that are able to make this switch can burn sugars, proteins, and other food nutrients when available, and then switch to burning the body’s fat storage or fatty acids when food calories are not available. It turns out that losing weight is not just about burning calories, it’s also about switching between these pathways as efficiently as possible. The Met Flex Diet gives readers every tool they need to meet their weight loss goals.

The title “Bullfrog” is given to the Navy SEAL who has served the longest on active duty. Admiral McRaven was honored to receive this honor in 2011 when he took charge of the United States Special Operations Command. When McRaven retired in 2014, he had 37 years as a Navy SEAL under his belt, leading men and women at every level of the special operations community. During those four decades, Admiral McRaven dealt with every conceivable leadership challenge. This book draes on these and countless other experiences from Admiral McRaven’s incredible life.

Fusing science and social justice, renowned public health researcher Dr. Arline T. Geronimus offers an urgent, “monumental” book (Ibram X. Kendi, author of Stamped from the Beginning) exploring the ways in which systemic injustice erodes the health of marginalized people. Until now, there has been little discussion about the insidious effects of social injustice on the body. Weathering shifts the paradigm, shining a light on the topic and offering a roadmap for hope.

For more than half a century, medical advances have been driven by investigators launching experiments inside labs. Science is often conducted in isolation and geared toward the long view. This is the story of a group of people who tried to force the lab doors parents whose children had been diagnosed with a rare and fatal genetic condition known as Niemann-Pick disease type C. Amy Dockser Marcus shows what happens when a community joins forces with doctors and researchers to try to save children’s lives.

Bring the fun of Dollywood right to your own kitchen with 100 of the most delicious foods from Dollywood and its surrounding parks. From favorite snacks and main dishes to refreshing drinks and popular desserts, Dollywood has some incredible food. And now, you can recreate all of your favorites—and discover some new favorites—with these 100 recipes in The Unofficial Dollywood Cookbook. Perfect for everyone from Dollywood super fans who miss those familiar flavors in between trips to fans who have never visited but still want to experience the amazing food.

Books to Celebrate Motherhood This Mother’s Day

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A mother and daughter unpack a lifetime’s secrets while on vacation in Paris. Every daughter has her own distinctive voice, her inimitable style, and her secrets. Laurie Ormson is an artist, a collector of experiences. She travels the world with a worn beige duffel bag. Every mother has her own distinctive voice, her inimitable style, and her secrets. Laurie’s mother is the famous “Dr. Liz.” An elegant perfectionist. She travels the world with a matched set of suitcases. So begins Things I Wish I Told My Mother. You will wish this novel never ends.

Twenty-six-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, adopted daughter of a pair of Minneapolis liberals, is as disturbed and uncertain as the rest of America around her. But for Cedar, this change is profound and deeply personal. She is four months pregnant. Though she wants to tell the adoptive parents who raised her from infancy, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, Mary Potts, an Ojibwe to understand both her and her baby’s origins. As Cedar goes back to her own biological beginnings, society around her begins to disintegrate.

Perdita Lee may appear to be your average British schoolgirl; Harriet Lee may seem just a working mother trying to penetrate the school social hierarchy; but there are signs that they might not be as normal as they think they are. For one thing, they share a gold-painted, seventh-floor walk-up apartment with some surprisingly verbal vegetation. And then there’s the gingerbread they make. Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic children’s stories, Helen Oyeyemi invites readers into a delightful tale of a surprising family legacy, in which the inheritance is a recipe.

Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. What’s worse is she can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with their angelic daughter Harriet does Frida finally feel she’s attained the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she’s just enough. Until Frida has a horrible day. In this taut and explosive debut novel, one lapse in judgement lands a young mother in a government reform program where custody of her child hangs in the balance.

Shelly Means, a stay-at-home mom and disgraced former PTA president, is poised to get the one thing in life she really wants: a beach house in the Hamptons. Surely, once she has her beach house, Shelly will at last feel at peace, in control, and content. It might be a very small house, and it might be in the least-fancy part of the Hamptons, but Shelly is hell-bent on achieving this idea of paradise. But what should be a simple real estate transaction quickly goes awry as Shelly’s new neighbors disapprove of her proposed shipping container house.

 In New York Times bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning writer and producer Jessi Klein’s second collection, she hilariously explodes the cultural myths and impossible expectations around motherhood and explore the humiliations, poignancies, and possibilities of midlife. Written with Klein’s signature candor and humanity, I’ll Show Myself Out is an incisive, moving, and often uproarious collection.

Veena, Mala and Nandini are three very different women with something in common. Out of love, each bears a secret that will haunt her life—and that of her daughter—when the risk of telling the truth is too great. But secrets have consequences. Particularly to Asha, the young woman on the cusp of adulthood who links them together. Three mothers, bound by love, deceit and a young woman who connects them all. Secret Lives of Mothers & Daughters is an intergenerational novel about family, duty and the choices we make in the name of love.

Dear friends and army wives Diana, Carmen, and Joanie have been through war, rumors of war, marital problems, motherhood, fears, joy, and heartache. But none of the women are prepared when their daughters decide to enlist in the army together. Facing an empty nest won’t be easy. Especially for Carmen. With emotions already high, she suffers an even greater blow: divorce papers. Embarking on a journey of hope, romance, and healing, Diana, Carmen, and Joanie are at a turning point in their lives. And with the open road ahead of them, it’s just the beginning.

Annelise is a dreamer: imagining her future while working at her parents’ popular bakery in Feldenheim, Germany, anticipating all the delicious possibilities yet to come. There are rumors that anti-Jewish sentiment is on the rise, but Annelise and her parents can’t quite believe that it will affect them; they’re hardly religious at all. But as Annelise falls in love, marries, and gives birth to her daughter, the dangers grow closer. A novel of dazzling emotional richness, Send for Me is an epic and intimate exploration of mothers and daughters, duty and obligation, hope and forgiveness.

New Fiction for May

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“Mom seems off.” Her brother’s words echo in Sam Montgomery’s ear as she turns onto the quiet North Carolina street where their mother lives alone. She brushes the thought away as she climbs the front steps. But stepping inside, she quickly realizes home isn’t what it used to be. To find out what’s got her mom so frightened in her own home, Sam will go digging for the truth. But some secrets are better left buried. A haunting Southern Gothic, A House with Good Bones explores the twisted roots lurking just beneath the veneer of a perfect home and family.

One afternoon in November 1975, ten-year-old Miranda Larkin comes home from school to find her house eerily quiet. Her mother is missing. Nothing else is out of place. There is no sign of struggle. Her mom’s pocketbook remains in the front hall, in its usual spot. So begins a mystery that will span a lifetime. What happened to Jane Larkin? A mother vanished. A father presumed guilty. There is no proof. There are no witnesses. For the children, there is only doubt.

Penelope Schleeman, a consistently broke Connecticut high school teacher, is as surprised as anyone when her sensitive debut novel, “American Mermaid”—the story of a wheelchair-bound scientist named Sylvia who discovers that her withered legs are the vestiges of a powerful tail—becomes a bestseller. Penelope soon finds herself lured to LA by promises of easy money to co-write the “American Mermaid” screenplay for a major studio with a pair of male hacks. American Mermaid follows a young woman braving a world of casual smiles and ruthless calculation.

The only life Tress has known on her island home in an emerald-green ocean has been a simple one, with the simple pleasures of collecting cups brought by sailors from faraway lands and listening to stories told by her friend Charlie. But when his father takes him on a voyage to find a bride and disaster strikes, Tress must stow away on a ship and seek the Sorceress of the deadly Midnight Sea. Can Tress leave her simple life behind and make her own place sailing a sea where a single drop of water can mean instant death?

Sally Milz is a sketch writer for “The Night Owls,” the late-night live comedy show that airs each Saturday. With a couple of heartbreaks under her belt, she’s long abandoned the search for love, settling instead for the occasional hook-up, career success, and a close relationship with her stepfather to round out a satisfying life. With her keen observations and trademark ability to bring complex women to life on the page, Sittenfeld explores the neurosis-inducing wonder of love, while slyly dissecting the social rituals of romance and gender relations in the modern age.

Kit Darling is a maid with a snooping problem. She’s the “invisible girl,” compelled to poke into her wealthy clients’ closely guarded lives. It’s a harmless hobby until Kit sees something she can’t unsee in the home of her brand-new clients: a secret so dark it could destroy the privileged couple expecting their first child. This makes Kit dangerous to the couple. In turn, it makes the couple—who might kill to keep their secret—dangerous to Kit. As Mal begins to uncover the secret she realizes that nothing is quite as it seems.

Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959: At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek on the grounds of the grand and mysterious mansion, a local delivery man makes a terrible discovery. A police investigation is called and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most shocking and perplexing murder cases in the history of South Australia. An epic novel that spans generations, Homecoming asks what we would do for those we love, and how we protect the lies we tell.

William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. So it’s a relief when his skill on the basketball court earns him a scholarship to college, far away from his childhood home. He soon meets Julia Padavano, a spirited and ambitious young woman who surprises William with her appreciation of his quiet steadiness. Vibrating with tenderness, Hello Beautiful is a gorgeous, profoundly moving portrait of what’s possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.

Lily Lee is a bestselling author of the How to Be a Supernova At Work series, and her editor wants her to strike while the iron’s hot with a new book, How to Land the Perfect Job. But when Lily is offered a coveted position at a top firm, the employer background check reveals she’s short a few college credits and never actually completed her degree. Unbelievably, her worst nightmare has come true. The Do-Over is a delightfully warm and hopeful story about second chances in love and life, and how the future we want may turn out far different than we imagined.

New Gardening Books Available on the Libby App

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Homesteader Jessica Sowards, the warm and energetic host of YouTube’s Roots and Refuge Farm, is the perfect teacher for new gardeners, offering not just know-how but inspiration and time-management tips for success. Jessica wants your first food-growing experience to be a positive one, and she’s prepared to go the distance to make sure tending the earth becomes your new favorite hobby. With Jessica as your guide, you’ll soon discover all the satisfactions, challenges, and great joys of growing your own food garden.

The growing group of bird enthusiasts who enjoy feeding and watching their feathered friends will learn how they can expand their activity and help address the pressing issue of habitat loss with 100 Plants to Feed the Birds.  In-depth profiles offer planting and care guidance for 100 native plant species that provide food and shelter for birds throughout the year, from winter all the way through breeding and migrating periods.

This book aims to cover the most commonly asked questions by new plant owners and will help people who want to have more greenery in their lives but don’t know where to start. It will advise on the best plant for a variety of home conditions so that everyone should be able to find plants that suit their space. The innate human need to be around nature is called Biophilia, and this book will tap into that need without over complicating things, with the focus on low maintenance, good-looking greenery.

Growing food in your backyard (or even on a porch or windowsill!) is one of the simplest and most rewarding ways to nourish yourself, be self-sufficient, and connect with nature in a hands-on way. Here sustainability expert Julia Watkins shares everything you need to know to grow your own vegetables, fruits, and herbs (as well as wildflowers and other beneficial companion plants). The book covers all the nuts and bolts of creating and caring for your garden followed by a deeper dive into the plants themselves.

If you’re bored with the same old entry-level houseplants and long for something new, up your game with Enid Offolter. Called “the Houseplant Queen” by the New York Times, Offolter and her company, NSE Tropicals, are celebrities within the rare plant community, with legions of obsessed Instagram followers and plants that sell in heated auctions for thousands of dollars. In Welcome to the Jungle, Offolter shows you how to grow and propagate some of these exceptional botanicals on your own.

Discover how to partner ornamental plants with edible ones for a garden that offers both storybook appeal and a plethora of culinary delights. Stylish and celebratory, The Elegant and Edible Garden takes food growing to a higher plane. Host of The Potager Blog, author and garden stylist Linda Vater, shares her vision for creating a garden space where food and flowers grow side by side. Known as a potager, these gardens are formal in their framework yet flexible and personal in their edible yields.

In The Healthy Vegetable Garden, expert organic gardener Sally Morgan explains how to use natural approaches to cope with the challenges of a changing climate through principles from regenerative gardening, agroecology, and permaculture–all to help your green space thrive. Whether you’re an experienced gardener, homesteader, or market farmer, this A-Z, soil-to-table guide shows you how to reduce chemical inputs; naturally enrich your growing ecology; and create a hardy, nutrient-dense, and delicious crop.

Did you know you can have a garden that’s equal parts food source and wildlife haven? In Grow Now, Emily Murphy shares easy-to-follow principles for regenerative gardening that foster biodiversity and improve soil health. She also shows how every single yard mirrors and connects to the greater ecosystem around us. Exquisitely photographed and filled with helpful lists and sidebars, Grow Now is an actionable, hopeful, and joyful roadmap for growing our way to individual climate contributions.

For anyone who has ever wanted to tend a little piece of ground but wasn’t sure where to begin, GrowVeg offers simple recipes for gardening projects that are both attainable and beautiful. Benedict Vanheems, editor of the popular website GrowVeg.com, guides aspiring green thumbs to success from the start, no matter what size gardening space you have. Get recommendations for veggie varieties for your first edible garden, plant a miniature orchard, and grow an edible archway.

New Nonfiction for April

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We live in an upside-down culture. We wink at our vices as coping strategies while restricting our virtues to our online personas, where they won’t interfere with our real lives. And we wonder why we feel empty, exhausted, and directionless. But why do we do things that we know are harmful for us? Jonathan “JP” Pokluda wants you to know there’s a better, more fulfilling way to live, and it doesn’t involve looking inside yourself for the answers–because that’s not where you’ll find them.

Nobody sits us down and teaches us how to love. So we’re often thrown into relationships with nothing but romance movies and pop culture to help us muddle through. Until now. Instead of presenting love as an ethereal concept or a collection of clichés, Jay Shetty lays out specific, actionable steps to help you develop the skills to practice and nurture love better than ever before. By living Jay Shetty’s eight rules, we can all love ourselves, our partner, and the world better than we ever thought possible.

What makes a life fulfilling and meaningful? The simple but surprising answer is: relationships. The stronger our relationships, the more likely we are to live happy, satisfying, and overall healthier lives. In fact, the Harvard Study of Adult Development reveals that the strength of our connections with others can predict the health of both our bodies and our brains as we go through life. With warmth, wisdom, and compelling life stories, The Good Life shows us how we can make our lives happier and more meaningful through our connections to others.

For twelve years the Golden State Killer terrorized California, stalking victims and killing without remorse. Then he simply disappeared, for the next until an amateur DNA sleuth opened her laptop. In Barbara Rae-Venter reveals how she went from researching her family history as a retiree to hunting for a notorious serial killer—and how she became the nation’s leading authority on investigative genetic genealogy, the most dazzling new crime-fighting weapon to appear in decades.

 The Angel Makers is a true-crime story like no other–a 1920s midwife who may have been the century’s most prolific killer leading a murder ring of women responsible for the deaths of at least 160 men. The horror occurred in a rustic farming enclave in modern-day Hungary. To look at the unlikely lineup of murderesses–village wives, mothers, and daughters–was to come to the shocking realization that this could have happened anywhere, and to anyone.

A witty, provocative look inside the tumultuous marriages of five famous writers, illuminating the creative process as well as the role of money, fame, and power in these complex and fascinating relationships. The history of wives is largely one of silence, resilience, and forbearance. Toss in celebrity, male privilege, ruthless ambition, narcissism, misogyny, infidelity, alcoholism, and a mood disorder or two, and it’s easy to understand why the marriages of so many famous writers have been stormy, short-lived, and mutually destructive.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to rethink everything. Now, when it comes to envisioning a post-pandemic future, noted financial expert Jill Schlesinger hears one question over and over: How far should I really go to change my life? The Great Money Reset is your guide to getting serious and building your best life. A road map for navigating our present era, this book shows us how to take advantage of the seismic changes unfurling all around us to make big life improvements.

It is a moment shrouded in horror and mystery. Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, at just forty, in a painful, utterly bizarre manner that would not have been out of place in one of his own tales of terror. What was the cause of his untimely death, and what happened to him during the three missing days before he was found on the streets of Baltimore, wearing ill-fitting clothes that were not his own? In a compelling dual-timeline narrative, Mark Dawidziak sheds new light on the enigmatic master of macabre.

When veteran war reporter Benjamin Hall woke up in Kyiv on the morning of March 14, 2022, he had no idea that, within hours, Russian bombs would nearly end his life. As a journalist for Fox News, Hall had worked in dangerous war zones like Syria and Afghanistan, but with three young daughters at home, life on the edge was supposed to be a thing of the past. Saved is a powerful memoir of family and friends, of life and healing, and of how to respond when you are tested in ways you never thought possible.

New DVDs Available at Your Library

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Based on the bestseller “A Man Called Ove,” A Man Called Otto tells the story of Otto Anderson (Tom Hanks), a grump who no longer sees purpose in his life following the loss of his wife. Otto is ready to end it all, but his plans are interrupted when a lively young family moves in next door, and he meets his match in quick-witted Marisol. She challenges him to see life differently, leading to an unlikely friendship that turns his world around.

A reclusive English teacher, living alone in the wake of a tragedy, attempts to reconnect with his teenage daughter for one last chance at redemption in filmmaker Darren Aronofsky’s transcendent, emotional epic. Nominated for three Academy Awards and featuring a career-defining performance from Brendan Fraser, The Whale is a deeply moving story of heartache, empathy, and grace.

From director-writer-producer Todd Field comes TÁR, starring Cate Blanchett as the iconic musician, Lydia Tár. The film examines the changing nature of power, its impact and durability in our modern world. Set in the international world of Western classical music, the film centers on Lydia Tár, widely considered one of the greatest living composer-conductors and the very first female director of a major German orchestra.

A young couple (Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult) travels to an exclusive island restaurant where the chef (Ralph Fiennes) has prepared a pricey, lavish menu. But it soon becomes clear that the dinner guests are about to be served some shocking surprises in this dark comedy written by Seth Reiss & Will Tracy, and directed by Mark Mylod.

Brad Pitt stars as Ladybug, an unlucky assassin determined to do his job peacefully after one too many gigs gone off the rails. Fate, however, may have other plans, as Ladybug’s latest mission puts him on a collision course with lethal adversaries from around the globe – all with connected, yet conflicting, objectives – on the world’s fastest train…and he’s got to figure out how to get off. 

Till is a profoundly emotional and cinematic film about the true story of Mamie Till-Mobley’s relentless pursuit of justice for her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till, who, in 1955, was lynched while visiting his cousins in Mississippi. In Mamie’s poignant journey of grief turned to action, we see the universal power of a mother’s ability to change the world.  The pursuit of justice became a galvanizing moment that helped lead to the creation of the civil rights movement.

From acclaimed filmmaker James Gray and featuring an all-star cast including Anthony Hopkins, Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong comes Armageddon Time. Set in 1980s Queens, New York, it is a deeply personal story about the strength of family, the complexity of friendship and the generational pursuit of the American Dream.

Idris Elba stars in this pulse-pounding thriller as Dr. Nate, a recently widowed husband who returns to South Africa on a long-planned trip to a game reserve. What begins as a journey of healing turns into a fearsome fight for survival as Dr. Nate and his daughters find themselves hunted by a massive, rogue lion intent on proving that the savannah has but one apex predator.

Veteran bounty hunter Max Borlund heads deep into Mexican territory to find and return Rachel Kidd, the wife of a wealthy businessman. After learning she actually fled from the abusive marriage, Max faces a choice: finish the job he’s been hired to do, or stand aside while ruthless mercenary outlaws and his longtime rival close in on a town that’s been his temporary sanctuary.

New Fiction for April

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Summer, 2021. Nell has come home at her family’s insistence to celebrate an anniversary. Fifty years ago, her father wrote The Golden Bones. Part picture book, part treasure hunt, Sir Frank Churcher created a fairy story about Elinore, a murdered woman whose skeleton was scattered all over England. Clues and puzzles in the pages of The Golden Bones led readers to seven sites where jewels were buried – gold and precious stones, each a different part of a skeleton. One by one, the tiny golden bones were dug up until only Elinore’s pelvis remained hidden.

It begins in an unnamed city nicknamed “the Fairest”, it is distinguished by many things from the river fair to the mountains that split the municipality in half; its theaters and many museums; the Morgue Ship; and, like all cities, but maybe especially so, by its essential unmappability. Dora, a former domestic servant at the university has a secret desire—to find where her brother went after he died, believing that the answer lies within The Museum of Psykical Research, where he worked when Dora was a child.

Following the success of her debut novel, American writer Althea James receives an invitation from Joseph Goebbels himself to participate in a culture exchange program in Germany. For a girl from a small town in Maine, 1933 Berlin seems to be sparklingly cosmopolitan, blossoming in the midst of a great change with the charismatic new chancellor at the helm. Then Althea meets a beautiful woman who promises to show her the real Berlin, and soon she’s drawn into a group of resisters who make her question everything she knows about her hosts–and herself.

When a prominent University of Wyoming professor goes missing, authorities are stumped. That is, until Joe Pickett makes two surprising discoveries while hunting down a wounded elk on his district as an epic spring storm descends upon him. First, Joe finds the professor’s vehicle parked on a remote mountainside. Then he finds the professor’s frozen and mutilated body. When he attempts to learn more, his investigation is obstructed by Federal agents, extreme environmentalists, and Governor Colter Allen.

Author and single mom Finlay Donovan has been in messes before―after all, she’s a pro at removing bloodstains for various unexpected reasons―but none quite like this. When Finlay and her nanny/partner-in-crime Vero accidentally destroyed a luxury car that they had “borrowed” in the process of saving the life of Finlay’s ex-husband, the Russian mob did her a favor and bought the car for her. And now Finlay owes them. Mob boss Feliks is still running the show from behind bars, and he has a task for Finlay: find and identify a contract killer before the cops do.

At a busy festival site on a warm spring night, a baby lies alone in her pram, her mother vanishing into the crowds. A year on, Kim Gillespie’s absence casts a long shadow as her friends and loved ones gather deep in the heart of South Australian wine country to welcome a new addition to the family. Joining the celebrations is federal investigator Aaron Falk. But as he soaks up life in the lush valley, he begins to suspect this tight-knit group may be more fractured than it seems.

Nisha Cantor lives the globetrotting life of the seriously wealthy, until her husband announces a divorce and cuts her off. Nisha is determined to hang onto her glamorous life. But in the meantime, she must scramble to cope–she doesn’t even have the shoes she was, until a moment ago, standing in. That’s because Sam Kemp – in the bleakest point of her life – has accidentally taken Nisha’s gym bag. But Sam hardly has time to worry about a lost gym bag–she’s struggling to keep herself and her family afloat.

Maya was a high school senior when her best friend, Aubrey, mysteriously dropped dead in front of the enigmatic man named Frank whom they’d been spending time with all summer. Seven years later, Maya lives in Boston with a loving boyfriend and is kicking the secret addiction that has allowed her to cope with what happened years ago, the gaps in her memories, and the lost time that she can’t account for. But her past comes rushing back when she comes across a recent YouTube video in which a young woman suddenly keels over and dies in a diner…

In the wake of an insignificant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for a goddess, who tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga – literally ‘victory city’ – the wonder of the world. Over the next two hundred and fifty years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga’s.

New Audiobooks Available on the Libby App

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In May 1971, Pam Jackson and Sherri Miller were two seventeen-year-olds driving to an end-of-the-school-year party in a rundown Studebaker Lark when they seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. Police back then didn’t do enough to try and find them. Investigators thirty years later did too much. Two families endure decades of pain as they await answers of what happened to their girls. When a third family is pulled into the mystery, they quickly learn their nightmare is just beginning.

Someone inside your house wants you dead, but no one believes you…Joanne knows how lucky she is. Richard is a wonderful husband, Evie is the most gorgeous baby girl couldn’t be better. Until Richard’s twenty-year-old daughter Chloe turns up. Chloe hasn’t spoken to her father since the day he married Joanne two years ago. But Chloe wants to make peace. She’ll even move in for a few weeks to help Joanne with the new baby. It sounds perfect, but when things happen that make Joanne feel like she’s losing her mind, she begins to wonder: Is Chloe really here to help?

It’s 1980, and Lillian Waters is hitting the road for the very last time. Jaded from her years in the music business, perpetually hungover, and diagnosed with career-ending vocal problems, Lillian cobbles together a nationwide farewell tour featuring some old hands from her early days playing honky-tonk bars in Washington State and Nashville, plus a few new ones. Exploring one unforgettable woman’s creativity, ambition, and sacrifices in a world—and an art form—made for men, The Farewell Tour asks us to consider how much of our past we can ever leave behind.

Toxic thoughts, depression, anxiety–our mental mess is frequently aggravated by a chaotic world and sustained by an inability to manage our runaway thoughts. But we shouldn’t settle into this mental mess as if it’s just our new normal. There’s hope and help available to us–and the road to healthier thoughts and peak happiness may actually be shorter than you think. Dr. Caroline Leaf provides a scientifically proven five-step plan to find and eliminate the root of anxiety, depression, and intrusive thoughts in your life.

A submerged car is pulled from the bottom of the lake. The driver has been shot in the back of the head and no other bodies are found. Only the legendary Dragon’s Heart remains inside. When it rises to the surface, greedy collectors from around the world gather. They’ll stop at nothing to gain possession of the priceless artifact. Only flower-breeder Zoey Phoenix stands in their way… Forget what you know…yet the past remembers.

1873. At an abandoned château on the outskirts of Paris, a dark séance is about to take place, led by acclaimed spiritualist Vaudeline D’Allaire. Known worldwide for her talent in conjuring the spirits of murder victims to ascertain the identities of the people who killed them, she is highly sought after by widows and investigators alike. Lenna Wickes has come to Paris to find answers about her sister’s death, but to do so, she must embrace the unknown and overcome her own logic-driven bias against the occult.

Production for the tenth season of Bake Week is ready to begin at the gothic estate of host and celebrity chef Betsy Martin, and everything seems perfect. The tent is up, the top-tier ingredients are aligned, and the crew has their cameras at the ready. The six contestants work to prove their culinary talents over the course of five days, while Betsy is less than thrilled to share the spotlight with a new cohost—the brash and unpredictable Archie Morris. But as the baking competition commences, things begin to go awry.

Hazel Rothbury is traveling all alone from her home in England aboard the celebrated ship Titanic. Following the untimely death of her father, Hazel’s mother is sending her to the US to work in a factory, so that she might send money back home to help her family make ends meet. But Hazel harbors a secret dream: She wants to be a journalist, and she just knows that if she can write and sell a story about the Titanic’s maiden voyage, she could earn enough money to support her family and not have to go to a sweatshop.

Carla Black’s life motto is “here for a good time, not for a long time.” She’s been travelling the world on her own in her vintage Jeep Wrangler for nearly a decade, stopping only long enough to replenish her adventure fund. Eamon Sullivan is a modern-day cartographer who creates digital maps. Fate throws them together when Carla arrives in Dublin for her best friend’s wedding and Eamon is tasked with picking her up from the airport. But what should be a simple drive across Ireland quickly becomes a chance at love – if only they choose it.

Books to Read to Commemorate Women’s History Month

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Ambassador Nikki R. Haley offers inspiring examples of a range of women who worked against obstacles and opposition to get things done – including Haley herself. As a brown girl growing up in Bamberg, South Carolina, no one would have predicted she would become the first minority female governor in America, the first female and the first minority governor in South Carolina, or the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Woven with stories from Haley’s own childhood and political career, this book will inspire the next generation of female leaders.

The Curies’ newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these “shining girls” are the luckiest alive — until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her enslaved ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

Toronto, 1926. Knowing that he will die without an heir, childless millionaire Charles Millar leaves behind a controversial will: the recipient of his fortune will be decided in a contest that will become a media sensation and be known as the Great Stork Derby. His money will go to the winner: the woman who bears the most children in the ten years after his death. Prize Women is an evocative and engrossing novel of motherhood, survival, and the heartbreaking decisions we make to protect the ones we love–even when it hurts those we care for most.

Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them. Liza Mundy brings to life this story of American courage, service, and scientific accomplishment.

Rosalind Franklin has always been an outsider―brilliant, but different. Whether working at the laboratory she adored in Paris or toiling at a university in London, she feels closest to the science, those unchanging laws of physics and chemistry that guide her experiments. When she is assigned to work on DNA, she believes she can unearth its secrets.  Marie Benedict’s powerful novel shines a light on a woman who sacrificed her life to discover the nature of our very DNA.

Set on the Korean island of Jeju, The Island of Sea Women follows Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls from very different backgrounds, as they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective. This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a unique and unforgettable culture, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous physical work, and the men take care of the children. The Island of Sea Women introduces readers to the fierce female divers of Jeju Island and the dramatic history that shaped their lives.

Who says women don’t go to war? From Vikings and African queens to cross-dressing military doctors and WWII Russian fighter pilots, these are the stories of women for whom battle was not a metaphor. The woman warrior is always cast as an anomaly–Joan of Arc, not G.I. Jane. But women, it turns out, have always gone to war. In this fascinating, lively, and wide-ranging book, historian Pamela Toler draws from a lifetime of scouring books for mentions of women warriors to tell their stories and to consider why women go to war.

The true-life story of women’s experiences in the ‘Wild West’ is more gripping, more heart-rending, and more stirring than all the movies, novels, folk-legends and ballads that popular imagination has been able to create. Reading the extraordinary accounts they have left behind them, their experiences seem as strange to us today as it must have been to have lived through them, perhaps even stranger. They were put to the test, in terms of sheer survival, in ways that we can only dimly imagine.

New Nonfiction for March

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Sorrowful widows, vengeful jezebels, innocent maidens, wronged lovers, former slaves, even the occasional axe-murderess–America’s female ghosts differ widely in background, class, and circumstance. Yet one thing unites them: their ability to instill fascination and fear, long after their deaths. Here are the full stories behind some of the best-known among them, as well as the lesser-known–though no less powerful.

In life, moments arise when you have to decide your next move. When choosing whether to accept a new job, purchase a house, attend a school, or start a relationship, how do you settle on which direction to take? Trey Gowdy has found that most consequential decisions boil down to three simple options: start, stay, or leave. Over the years, Gowdy has made some great decisions and some lousy ones (and he admits to both). In Start, Stay, or Leave, he shares his hard-earned wisdom.

They risk their lives every day to protect and serve our homes, families and communities. Here are their most dramatic true stories, in their own unforgettable words. From the police academy to the precinct, Walk the Blue Line is a first-person tour through the days and nights of American policing. Those who wear a badge, doing their best to help people. These patrol officers and K9 handlers, sheriffs and detectives, reveal what it’s really like to wear the uniform, to carry the weight of the responsibility they’ve been given.

In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions–even abandoning his phone for three months–but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey –and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong.

The summer before his senior year in college, Greg Melville worked at the cemetery in his hometown, and thanks to hour upon hour of pushing a mower over the grassy acres, he came to realize what a rich story the place told of his town and its history. Thus was born Melville’s lifelong curiosity with how, where, and why we bury and commemorate our dead. Melville’s Over My Dead Body is a wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the passing eras in history but have also shaped it.

Anthony Bourdain’s death by suicide in June 2018 shocked people around the world. Bourdain seemed to have it all: an irresistible personality, a dream job, a beautiful family, and international fame. The reality, though, was more complicated than it seemed. Down and Out in Paradise is the first book to tell the full Bourdain story, and to show how Bourdain’s never-before-reported childhood traumas fueled both the creativity and insecurities that would lead him to a place of despair.

In 1943, as the war against Nazi Germany raged abroad, President Franklin Roosevelt had a critical goal: a face-to-face sit-down with his allies Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. This first-ever meeting of the Big Three in Tehran, Iran, would decide some of the most crucial strategic details of the war. Yet when the Nazis found out about the meeting, their own secret plan took shape—an assassination plot that would’ve changed history.

Before losing his mother, twelve-year-old Prince Harry was known as the carefree one, the happy-go-lucky Spare to the more serious Heir. Grief changed everything. He struggled at school, struggled with anger, with loneliness—and, because he blamed the press for his mother’s death, he struggled to accept life in the spotlight. For the first time, Prince Harry tells his own story, chronicling his journey with raw, unflinching honesty. A landmark publication, Spare is full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.

Band of Brothers meets Argo in this dramatic and heartfelt dual memoir of the war in Afghanistan told by two men from opposite worlds. Always Faithful entwines the stories of Marine Major Tom Schueman, and his friend and Afghan interpreter, Zainullah “Zak” Zaki, as they describe their parallel lives, converging paths, and unbreakable bond in the face of overwhelming danger, culminating in Zak and his family’s harrowing escape from Kabul. The end result is an intensely personal and uniquely ground-level account of Tom and Zak’s experience.